


how the kingdom lights shined just for me and you

by Bugsquads



Category: DC's Legends of Tomorrow (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Kinda, SO MUCH FLUFF, Sickfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-18
Updated: 2018-12-18
Packaged: 2019-09-22 11:21:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,939
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17058860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bugsquads/pseuds/Bugsquads
Summary: “No, no, no,” Sara cuts Mick off. “Nora, you’re dating Ray Palmer. This date needs to be magical. But don’t try to do too much, you’re still a beginner. Keep it simple. Dinner at a fancy restaurant goes a long way.”Or:Nora plans a date for the first time. Things don’t work out as expected.





	how the kingdom lights shined just for me and you

**Author's Note:**

> This was a tumblr prompt from the lovely Beth aka @princesstomaz! Once again, it was only supposed to be half its current length, but then this happened.

They haven’t been together long when Nora gets sick. Or rather, they haven’t been together  _ officially  _ for very long. 

It’s been two weeks since they fought an angry Griffin in 1833, since Ray’s eyes lit up when he confirmed that it was  _ November  _ 1833\. One picnic blanket later and Ray’s taking her by the hand and telling her to trust him. She does. Inexplicably, unequivocally, completely. She has since Berlin. She supposes she will for the rest of her days. 

“Where are we going?” Nora asks, biting the smile back from her voice as Ray pulls her through an overgrown field in the dead of the night. Nora can hear the ocean somewhere around them, can smell its salty spray lapping at the shore. 

“ _ Trust  _ me,” Ray reminds her, squeezing his hand tight with his own. Nora’s never felt safer. 

Ray deposits the blanket at the edge of the field at the top of a cliff, ocean roaring beneath them. The air is cold, a November bite to it, and Ray pulls Nora close as they sit on the blanket. She settles against his chest, his arms right around her, and he tells her to look up. 

Moments later, they appear. Distant-looking at first, faded specks in a dark sky, unaffected by light pollution. Just moving discs amongst the stars freckling the night. The same constellations Ray pointed out as they walked around Washington the night Nora was released from prison. Stars so far away that, Ray informed her, they could have blinked out long ago, their light so strong it still arches through space towards them. Like the rest of the universe didn’t get the memo that it should replace the bright yellow with black. 

It’s a meteor shower. Flashes of light trailing through the sky and seeming to disappear behind the curve of the horizon. Appearing to bury themselves into the ocean. Slow at first, but burning quicker and brighter and bolder as the night presses on. The meteors fill up the whole sky, bright as the day. 

“It’s 1833. The Leonids. People thought the sky was falling. It looked like the end of the world,” Ray whispers into Nora’s hair, sending shivers down her spine. It’s not hard to understand why it felt like the end of the world, Nora thinks, watching the sky in awe. She doesn’t think she could tear her eyes away if she tried. 

“It’s beautiful,” she whispers. 

“Yeah. Beautiful,” Ray breathes, after a beat.

When she turns to him, minutes later, having managed to turn from the sky, Ray’s looking at her. Frozen, as if he’s been watching her for a while.

“Hi,” she says, through the stillness of the night. 

“Hi,” he beams back, his smile brighter than the meteors tumbling down above. Brighter than the sun. 

Their lips meet, moments later, crashing together in the kind of kiss that shatters lives, shifts tectonic plates, tilts the world on its axis. The kind of kiss that makes history. The kind of kiss at the end of a fairytale but the beginning of a long and winding story.  

When they get back to the waverider later, they’re officially a couple. Neither one of them can stop smiling, oblivious to the $20 Zari slides to Sara beneath the table with a growl of annoyance. 

 

Nora gets sick whilst they’re docked in Washington, forced to sit still for days after the Waverider suffers damages courtesy of displaced space pirates from the 23rd Century. Zari and Ray work to fix the problem, Sara growing restless after  a few hours and heading to the Bureau headquarters to find Ava. Nora watches John and Mick head for a bar soon afterwards and doesn’t see them again for several days. 

It’s spring when they land, weak sunlight pushing through the film of cloud, taking its first victory of the year over winter. Nora sits on the grass outside the waverider with Charlie, absently pulling up blades of grass, pinched between two fingers as they watch Ray and Zari working to patch up the sizeable hole on the outside of the time ship. 

“So, how’s it all going?” Charlie asks Nora, elbowing her lightly in the ribs. 

“What?” Nora frowns, watching Charlie taking a gulp from the beer in her right hand. 

“Y’know. You guys,” Charlie nods her head in the direction of Ray and Zari. 

It’s taken a while for Nora to feel like the rest of the legends accept her, moving from background dislike of Nora to tolerance to begrudging respect, but she thinks she’s there now. Charlie, who knows all too well what it’s like to live amongst the legends feeling a complete outsider, who understands that a second chance is a burden as much as it is a blessing, who knows what it feels like to have the crackle of magic flowing through her blood, was one of the first to befriend Nora. She was shortly followed by Zari, who, Nora discovers, trusts Charlie’s judgement implicitly. 

“It’s…” Nora isn’t sure how to describe her relationship with Ray. Isn’t sure how to sum up the feeling of being loved, really loved, by someone else for the first time. Of learning how to love someone properly whilst learning how to let herself be loved at the same time. Of finally feeling like the universe is a peaceful place. “It’s pretty great,” she settles for, deciding that there’s just no adjective in existence in the English language to help her out. 

“Is it weird?” Charlie asks, eyes on the ground. “Dating someone you live with and work with, I mean? Like aren’t you worried what will happen if it doesn’t work out?” She’s speaking quickly and casually, like it's no big deal, and for a second Nora wonders why Charlie would ask that, has half convinced herself that Ray has said something to her, is about to walk over to them and break up with her. 

But then she remembers the super complicated  _ thing  _ between Zari and Charlie which Ray warned Nora about soon after she moved into the waverider. Remembers the way they always sit together on the couch, arms pressed together, or how Zari will fall asleep on Charlie’s shoulder six nights out of seven, or how she’s lost count of the amount of times she’s seen one of them sneaking out of the other’s room in the early hours of the morning. 

“I’m not worried,” Nora shakes her head confidently. “Making it official doesn’t  _ change  _ things, it just...cements them.” She settles for, trying to sound as reassuring as possible. Partially because it’s true, she feels calm and confident that nothing like that is going to happen, and partially because she wants to make things easier for Charlie and Zari. She doesn’t know why they aren’t officially together yet, doesn’t feel it’s her business to ask, but since getting out of prison she’s been trying her hardest to just make people happy. To spread some kind of positivity after being robbed of it for over twenty years of her life. 

Charlie’s eyes have glazed a little as she watches Zari gesturing angrily at a section of exposed wiring in the waverider whilst Ray grimaces at it. 

“If there’s anything you need to-” Nora’s about to offer to talk to Charlie about anything she might need, but she’s cut off. 

“How were the meteors?” Charlie asks quickly, obviously trying to avoid the subject of her personal life. 

“Beautiful,” Nora smiles. 

“Bloody soppy idiot,” Charlie shakes her head affectionately in Ray’s direction. “You planning the next one?”

“The next what?”

“The next  _ date _ , dummy.”

“Uh-” Nora, in all honesty, hadn’t thought about it.

Having skipped straight from grade school  _ boys have cooties _ to a serious, loving adult relationship, and bypassing the awkward middle school hand holding, first dates with parents dropping her off at the movies, college serial dating, and mismatched early adulthood relationships, she isn’t sure how this is  _ done _ . All she knows is that she wants to do it perfectly. Wants everything to be flawless, because it’s what Ray deserves. He’s the best person she knows. 

“What… what should that involve, exactly?” Nora asks, trying to copy Charlie and act like this is  _ no big deal _ . 

“I dunno,” Charlie shrugs. “Do I look like the kind of person who goes on dates?”

“Right,” Nora sighs. 

“You alright? You’ve gone all pale,” Charlie comments. 

Nora assumes its nothing, just worry that she isn’t doing this whole dating thing properly, that Ray’s going to realise he can do much better than her at any second, but it turns out it’s the first symptom of many. 

The second is the sore throat, scratchy and raw and making it difficult to swallow. 

The third, soon after, is the sneezing, interrupting the intense mario kart session between the four of them and making Nora crash out of the road. 

“Ugh,” she lowers her head to her hands. “I’m terrible at this.”

“You’re trying your best,” Ray assures her, patting her lightly on the back. 

 

The symptoms all solidify somewhere between three and four a.m when Nora wakes up feeling like she may have been hit by a bus. Her first instinct is to reach out with her magic and find the source of the problem. It feels like the hot knife of infection running through her blood, but there’s nothing gapingly obvious. There’s no open wound, no curse, no demon, no magical diseases. Just a human body that feels entirely wrong. 

Nora decides to stand up, take a walk around the waverider, get a drink of water. She’d ask Gideon for a diagnosis but the space pirates mean that she’s decommissioned for the moment, right as Nora needs her the most. 

Her plan to walk around the ship fails as soon as she steps out of bed, carefully to try not to disturb Ray, sleeping softly beside her. The ground shifts beneath her feet dramatically as soon as she tries to take a step forward, rising up to meet her eyes, hands scrabbling in front of her as they meet the hard surface of Ray’s floor.

“ _ Ow _ .”

“Nora?” Ray’s up and out of bed in seconds, his hands on her arms, hands, shoulders, face, peeling the curtain of hair back behind her ears. “What happened? Are you ok? You’re burning up,” he pulls her from the ground so she’s leaning back against the bed, legs stretched out in front of her. 

“The ground moved,” she groans, head pounding, throat protesting her every word. 

“Did you get dizzy?” He asks, checking her forehead for fever, feeling the pulse in her neck, hands everywhere, cataloguing her health on autopilot. 

“It’s fine. I just… I should just sleep it off,” she pushes him away half-heartedly, trying to use her magic to make herself feel better. All it does is saps her of energy. 

“We should… we should get you to a hospital, or the lab, or, or…” he’s a little frantic, Nora can tell, voice thick with worry over her. No one’s worried about her like this in a long time. Unselfish worry. 

“Ray,” she catches his hand, looks him in the eyes. “I’m alright.”

“We don’t have your medical history. It’s something I’ve been worrying about. We have no idea what you’ve been through, whether your shots are up to date, family history, genetic diseases…” he trails off, and Nora can feel his elevated heart rate in his wrist. 

“I’m ok. I just need to sleep it off,” her eyelids have doubled in weight, she’s certain. 

“Would you just come to the lab with me? Real quick?” He asks, one hand reaching up to cup her cheek. 

“In the morning,” she growls, wanting more than anything to  _ sleep.  _ But also very much not wanting to acknowledge that there might be something wrong with her. Something she can’t fix with magic. Something she can’t fix at  _ all.  _ A new brand of demon to face. 

“Nora-”

“If I come, will you let me sleep?” 

“I promise.”

 

Nora has the flu. The perfectly normal, human, painful, currently incurable, flu. Ray’s almost smiling as he breaks the news, something she’ll recover from within a week. Something they can get her a shot for so she doesn’t get again. None of that makes Nora feel any better. 

Ray gives her pain medication and a cup of water and she wakes up the next morning curled around him from the cold, bones aching, muscles shaking. 

She hasn’t been sick for a long time. She doesn’t understand the science behind demon possession, but Mallus kept sickness out. Acted like a repellant for anything that might damage his vessel. Like a neon flashing sign reading  _ no vacancy here.  _ The last time she can remember being sick, just plain old human sick, she was nine years old. Her mother confined her to her bedroom to sleep it off, her father snuck a box of donuts in and told her she was a fighter, that she was strong. (Nora can’t help but wonder if, even then, he was weighing up her usefulness to him. Thinking about how he could use her, destroy her for his own gain.)

“How are you doing?” Ray asks, snapping Nora out of her thoughts, his chest rumbling beneath her as he speaks. 

“M’fine,” she mumbles into his shirt. 

His hands are on her again, soft and careful, checking that she’s intact. 

“I think you’ll survive,” he says, before kissing the top of her head and pulling her in closer. 

 

Ray, it turns out, is an expert at caring for sick people. He brings Nora tea, flu medication, a paper bag of pastries, and returns from one trip out of the room with a giant bouquet of vibrant flowers (“to make the room brighter for you,” he explains, beaming at her.).

Day one of the flu is spent mostly sleeping in between mugs of herbal tea (some delicious, some Nora only drinks so as not to hurt Ray’s feelings). Day two is much the same, but by day three she’s well enough that she’s getting bored. That’s when Ray brings in the list of ‘culturally significant movies Nora needs to catch up on’, and helps Nora settle back onto a stack of pillows, sourced by Ray from  _ who  _ knows where, loading up the first movie on his tablet. 

 

In years to come, when they tell the story of the first date that Nora planned, she’ll blame those movies. The movies and the flu, caught from some random person on some random street in Washington, 2018, all because she’d had bigger priorities than getting a flu shot. 

They start with Star Wars, never having had time to watch it between missions before. They watch episodes four to six, back to back, Nora watching half asleep but still awake enough to appreciate the movies. It’s peaceful, leaning her head against Ray’s shoulder, their hands clasped tightly, the low volume of the movies pulling her in and out of sleep like the waves in the ocean. Ray’s occasional low laughter or gasps or sighs at the movies (Nora is strangely enamoured by his over the top reactions to the movies he’s seen hundreds of times, knows by heart) keeping her awake. She doesn’t miss his happy sighs when Leia rescues Han from the carbonite with a declaration of  _ someone who loves you _ , or the way he squeezes her hand a little tighter during their scenes on Endor. 

Later, they move on to rom-coms and musicals, earning an eye roll from Nora. 

“They’re the purest form of entertainment, Nora,” Ray assures her, flipping down the list of them he’s pre-downloaded. 

They start with 13 going on 30, Ray telling her they have to because it’s a classic. 

“It’s almost as old as me,” Nora teases. 

She cringes through the first part, teasing Ray every time he gets a little too into it, but by the movie’s midpoint she’s hooked too. It’s easy for Nora to empathise with Jenna Rink, having also skipped over a whole host of life’s important moments and being uncertain on how to navigate adult life with no experiences to back it up. Admittedly, demon possession is an entirely different ball game to suddenly waking up seventeen years into the future, but Nora  _ gets  _ it. And she can’t help but smile at the screen as the movie ends with Matt and Jenna getting their happy ending. As happy as anyone can hope for, Nora thinks. An ordinary life with a person you love. 

 

By the end of sick day four, Ray and Nora have watched no less than three total rom-coms and two musicals, and Nora is certain of one thing. Raymond Palmer deserves a Grand Gesture. 

She knows about his past. He’s told her about his history with love. Talked about Anna in pained whispers, Kendra in casual conversation, Felicity as an offhand comment. Nora finds it hard to make sense of, the fact that anyone could believe they’d be happier with someone other than Ray. Kind, gentle, flower-bringing Ray. 

He deserves something wonderful. Something like Matt’s doll house, Leia’s rescue, like the boys standing beneath their love interest’s bedroom windows with a boombox in, apparently, every eighties movie to exist. 

 

Nora is sick of being still by the evening of day four, so when Ray leaves to help Zari finish fixing the waverider, she showers and changes and wonders how the hell she's going to plan the perfect date, the grand gesture to end all grand gestures. 

She finds the rest of the legends, bar Ray and Zari, in the kitchen, playing a seemingly heated card game involving a stack of shiny, oversized gold coins and a collection of empty beer bottles. 

“So you’re alive then?” Charlie asks, tossing a coin at Nora as she walks in. 

“Looks that way,” Nora says, examining the coin. “Where did you  _ get  _ this?” It’s not like anything she’s seen before. 

“Space pirates,” Sara grins, slurring her words a little. Nora knows how high her tolerance is, wonders just how many of the empty beer bottles were hers. Nora’s afraid to ask for any further explanation. 

“Deal you in?” John asks, waving some of the cards at her. Her head’s a lot clearer now, craving something more challenging than movies and sleep. 

“Sure,” she shrugs, pulling up a seat between Charlie and John. “What  _ is  _ this game?”

“We invented it,” Mick supplies. 

“It doesn’t make  _ any  _ bloody sense,” Charlie whispers to Nora. 

“Charlie!” Sara throws a coin at Charlie, who catches it effortlessly between thumb and forefinger. “Don’t listen to her.” Sara tells Nora, and begins to explain the game. 

 

It’s thirty minutes later that Nora finds the right time to ask their thoughts on the whole grand gesture thing. Admittedly, she’s two beers deep and has a relatively low tolerance thanks to her years of demon possession and prison combined. 

“Hypothetically speaking,” Nora begins as John deals cards for a new round. She isn’t sure who’s winning the game, but she’s confident it isn’t her. “How would you arrange a… a  _ perfect  _ date?” She asks, avoiding everyone’s gazes despite the two beers. 

“Is this about what I said the other day?” Charlie asks, leaning forward a little. 

“What?  _ No _ . I’m just curious,” Nora brushes her off, taking another sip of beer to avoid having to elaborate. 

“I don’t know why you’re asking us, love,” John laughs softly, “never been much for actual  _ dating _ , personally.”

“Just take them to a bar. I can give you a recommendation,” Mick offers. 

“No, no, no,” Sara cuts Mick off. “Nora, you’re dating  _ Ray Palmer _ . This date needs to be magical. But don’t try to do too much, you’re still a beginner. Keep it simple. Dinner at a fancy restaurant goes a long way,” Sara winks. 

“Oh, because you’re such an expert?” Charlie counters. 

“Do I, or do I not, currently have a  _ beautiful  _ girlfriend?” Sara smirks, but Nora can’t help but feel like the pressure has just been upped even more. She knows that Sara’s right, whatever she decides to do does have to be magical. 

Just then, the Waverider’s lights flicker off before coming back brighter than before, and there’s a familiar low hum surrounding them, the background noise of the timedrive kicking into life. 

“Does this mean…?” Charlie doesn’t dare look hopeful. 

“Gideon?” Sara asks, looking up, as they all wait with bated breath to see if the waverider and Gideon are functional again. 

“Good evening, Ms. Lance. I appear to be fully operational once again,” Gideon’s voice floods the room. 

“ _ Yes _ !” Sara grins, initiating a group high five. 

 

It’s another two days before Nora is back to full health, spending one of them quarter backing the team with Zari as they fight goblins in 17th Century Russia, and one of them brainstorming date ideas in the library, convincing Ray that she’s just doing some casual historical research to help her on their missions. 

The anniversary of Nora being de-Mallused is coming up, and she plans the date for then. Partly because it’s an overwhelmingly happy occasion; the day Ray saved her life and helped to set her free, altering the course of her future and changing her whole world. But partly because it’s crushingly sad, and she needs something happy to distract herself. Nora has a lot of different feelings about her father, most of them driven by hatred and anger, unable to really put them all into words. But some of them, the ones that creep up on her in quiet moments, are happy. Her father teaching her to ride a bike, or singing happy birthday to her, or clapping the loudest for her during her first grade ballet recital. All normal things, to most people, taken for granted. Happy squares on a mostly cheerful patchwork of life. For Nora, they are achingly, agonisingly bittersweet. She isn’t ready to fully delve into her emotions towards either of her parents yet, isn’t ready to unravel her childhood or years of demon possession and what it means for her future. What she does want, is a fun day of distractions with the man she loves. There’ll be time to figure the rest out later. 

 

Nora keeps the details of the date as a surprise, simply telling Ray to make sure he wears something fancy. 

“So you’re really keeping this a secret, huh?” Ray teases, meeting Nora at the jump ship. 

“Yep,” she says confidently. “I just wanted to… I don’t know,” she still isn’t the best at talking about her feelings, having spent years being told  _ not  _ to do just that. “I just wanted to do something nice. For you.”

“Nora,” Ray smiles, “If it’s with you, I’m sure I’ll love it.”

 

Nora takes Sara’s advice and chooses a nice restaurant in downtown Washington to start off the date. She picked it herself, wanting the whole date to be her own work. She also has Gideon fabricate a red dress she finds online and immediately takes a liking to. 

When Ray sees her in it on the night of the date, he freezes for thirty whole seconds until Nora’s sure he hates it, or is having some kind of brain glitch, but then he’s kissing her and telling her she’s the most beautiful person in the entire universe. Ray’s voice always catches a little in his throat when he calls her beautiful, like he means it so much that he can’t quite formulate the words properly. Nora always has to look at the floor and take a breath afterward, because she isn’t quite certain how to process anyone caring about her  _ this much.  _

“So, where are we going?” Ray asks, following Nora out of the Waverider. 

“Wait and see,” Nora tells him. 

It’s a warm evening, and Zari and Charlie are sitting close together on the grass just outside. 

“See ya!” Charlie calls after them. 

“Be home by eleven!” Zari adds. 

“Don’t do anything I wouldn’t do!” Charlie comments. 

“So, basically we can do whatever we like?” Nora quips at her. 

Charlie seems to dwell on it for a second. “Maybe don’t kill anyone.”

“I can’t promise that,” Nora deadpans. 

Ray chuckles beside her, reaching for her hand. Their fingers tangle up, a perfect fit, as they exit the wooded area the Waverider’s parked in, emerging into a public park. They weave in amongst the steady stream of people, blending in with the crowd. Just two more people in a city of hundreds of thousands. Anonymous here, amongst little families and dog walkers, teenagers on skateboards and old couples walking slow. It feels right, somehow, to be here. Like nothing can go wrong.

 

Things  _ do  _ go wrong. The first hurdle comes at the restaurant, which they find easily enough, but there’s no reservation under Nora’s name. 

The thing is, she’s eaten at a lot of restaurants before, but never in her life has she made a reservation. Her father had a collection of places he liked to eat at scattered through time, and they’d have a table for him within moments, every time, without fail. She knows, now that she’s  _ herself  _ again, that this was done out of fear, but she still never stopped to consider the importance of a restaurant reservation at an upmarket place on a Saturday night. 

“And there’s no way you can fit us in?” Ray checks for the third time, as Nora stands a little behind him, more embarrassed than anything. There’s a reminder around every corner that she’s never going to have had a normal life. That she’s never going to be a  _ normal  _ person who knows how to plan a date. 

“Unfortunately not tonight, Sir. I can offer you a slot..” the hostess pauses, scrolling on the tablet in her right hand. “Two weeks from tonight?”

“ _ Who  _ knows where we’ll be then,” Ray mutters under his breath. 

“I’m sorry, what was that?”

“Nothing, nothing,” Ray waves the hostess off. “We’ll find somewhere else to eat. Thanks for your help.”

“Ugh,” Nora buries her head in her hands as soon as they step outside. “I suck.”

“Hey,” Ray’s fingers enclose her wrists, gently prying her hands away from her face. “Nora, look at me.” She does, frowning at him a little. “It’s not your fault.  _ Anyone  _ can forget to make a dinner reservation, it happens. We’ll just find some place else to eat.”

“But I didn’t even  _ consider  _ reservations. I’m never going to be able to… to do stuff like a normal person.”

“Everyone’s just had different experiences,” Ray assures her softly. “Yours are just a little more out there than most people’s. That doesn’t make you not normal, or anything like that. You’re  _ so  _ much cooler than anyone who did remember to make a reservation in that restaurant tonight. You can do  _ magic _ ,” he reminds her, rubbing small circles on her wrists with his thumbs. It calms her down for reasons she’s not able to explain. 

“I  _ could  _ beat every single one of them in a fight.”

“That’s the spirit,” Ray reaches down to press a light kiss to her forehead. “So, where do you wanna go eat instead?”

 

Nora takes Ray to the second place she had planned for their date night, marked in the sky by glimmering lights. The fair is in town, and according to several of the movies Ray showed her, a visit to the fair is an excellent date activity. Nora’s never been to a fair before, and she’s pretty excited as they draw close to the laughter, bright lights, and smell of sugary food. 

“When’s the last time you were at a fair?” Nora asks as they step through the front gates. 

“The last time? Huh, I don’t… I guess it was with Anna,” Ray smiles a little sadly. 

Nora’s heart sinks a little. Both of their lives have casualties in. People they’ll carry around with them in a hollow next to their hearts for the rest of their days. Complicated memories overlayed with heartbreak and guilt. The last thing Nora wants to do is make Ray sad, at any point in time, ever again. 

“Ray, I’m sorry, I didn’t-”

“No, it’s ok,” he assures her. “It was a happy memory. This one can be too.”

“Are you sure?” Nora checks. 

“Positive.”

 

The fair starts of well. Nora buys a tub of cotton candy, which is officially the sweetest thing she’s ever eaten, and eats it all in one go, against Ray’s warnings. They shoot at wooden ducks with water pistols and Ray wins a stuffed bear, which he proudly presents to Nora. Then, they decide to ride the Ferris wheel. 

“It’s pretty high, huh?” Nora realises as they enter the ride. 

“Are you afraid of heights? We don’t have to go up if you don’t want to,” Ray tells her. 

“I’m not afraid of heights,” Nora says confidently, as they enter a car and sit down. She’s thinking about The Notebook, a movie she’d had some problems with but, undeniably, had made Ferris wheels look super romantic. And that’s exactly what Nora’s going for here. 

She’s fine as they start to move off the ground, enjoying watching the people shrink a little, more and more lights spread out in front of them against the darkening sky. She’s a little  _ less _ fine as they near the top of the wheel and can see the whole fair below, lots of the city too. Just tiny people and pinpricks of light in the distance. 

The wheel stops every so often to let people off and let new people on, pausing for a half minute or so until the new people are secured in their cars, before moving on again. Until it  _ doesn’t _ , when Ray and Nora are situated right at the top of the wheel. 

“We should be moving again right about now, right?” Nora tries to see what’s going on down on the ground, other cars and sheer height getting in the way of the view. 

“There’s probably someone super slow getting in,” Ray assures her. 

“You’re probably right.” Nora’s gripping the bar in front of them so tightly that her knuckles are turning white. 

“I thought you were afraid of heights?”

“I  _ wasn’t. _ ” Nora never has been before. 

But now that she thinks about it, the fear she feels at the top of the Ferris wheel is the same kind of fear she remembers feeling at the top of that building in Berlin. Right as she told her father to let her go. There was a millisecond up there, just before the fall, before the totem kicked in, when she was suspended in mid air, nothing to hold her up. Her body buying her all the time it can, the magic or the demon or the sheer humanity inside of her battling against gravity to buy her all the time it can. But she knew that the fall was  _ about  _ to happen. The horrific pain of anticipation. 

“The cotton candy was a mistake. You were right,” Nora groans, a sick feeling swelling in her stomach, and she isn’t entirely sure what’s to blame. The height or the cotton candy or something else altogether. 

Ray smiles at her apologetically. “Yeah, I speak from experience there,” he winces. 

“ _ You  _ ate something unhealthy?” Nora’s voice is shaking a little, but she’s telling herself it’s fine, it’s normal, the wheel will start moving again soon. 

Ray puts his arm around her, squeezing her shoulder. “Yes. Once.” They’re  _ still  _ not moving. 

“How far up are we, anyway?” Nora needs hard facts and figures. Statistics on surviving a fall from this height. 

“Nora. We’re not going to fall. Try not to look down.”

“Where else is there to  _ look _ ?”

“Look at me. Ask me something. Anything you like, weirder the better.”

Nora frowns at him, knowing this is a distraction technique. Knowing he’s not doing this because there’s something to distract her from, meaning there’s absolutely a problem with the Ferris wheel. But, it’s either try and think about something else, or panic about her surprise fear of heights. 

“What’s your happiest memory?” It’s the first thing she thinks of. She’s trying her hardest to make some happy memories for herself now that she’s out of prison and no longer possessed, figures she needs some to hold onto. She hopes she’s giving Ray some happy memories too. She just doesn’t know what his favourite one is. 

Ray studies her face for a second before he answers. “There are three, actually.”

“Three?”

“Mmhmm. None of them are anything special,” he shrugs. “The first one’s from when I was a kid. I don’t remember how old I was, I guess pretty young. But my mom got really, really sad for a little bit after my dad left. For a while it kind of felt like the whole world was this miserable place, you know?” Nora nods, leaning in closer to Ray. Wishing he didn’t have a single sad memory to crowd the happy ones. “But then, right as it started getting warmer, she started getting happier. One Saturday, she woke me and my brother up super early, got us in the car, and we just left for the day. Do plan, no destination, mom just drove. I don’t even really remember what we did, aside from visiting the planetarium on the way home, I just remember sitting in the back seat of the car with all of the windows rolled down and mom’s music turned up all the way. And the world felt good again.”

“That’s a pretty great feeling,” Nora agrees, keeping her eyes on Ray. 

“The second memory…” he hesitates, “is of Anna, on her birthday.” Nora feels guilty again for dredging up sad parts of Ray’s life. 

She wonders how much it must hurt, knowing he has a time machine, but being powerless to prevent her death. The same pain which Sara and John and Zari also carry around, sharp and heavy. 

“I surprised her with a trip to New York,” Ray continues. “It was December, and we did all of the tourist stuff. Ice skating, Empire State Building, MoMA. We were just happy. She was gone by her next birthday.”

Nora doesn’t have any words. Doesn’t think there are any good ones for a time like this. They just sit in the stillness of the night for a while, Ferris wheel stubbornly unmoving, listening to the sounds of the fair around them. 

“What was she like?” Nora asks, minutes later. 

“She was just kind. Kindand good hearted. And I never thought I’d love anyone again after I lost her. But-” he takes a breath, “my third memory is of you. Of the day the Bureau let you go, and you got to come live on the Waverider.”

“What?” Nora’s stunned. Ray makes up a good third of her happiest memories at this point, but she’s at a distinct disadvantage. She doesn’t have many to pick from. Ray has a life’s worth. She wonders if they’d reach the moon if they could be laid end to end. 

“I- I missed you while you were in there,” Ray smiles a little shyly. “And it was nice to know you were safe. And… I was kind of excited to travel through time with you,” he admits. 

“ _ Ray _ ,” all Nora can do is reach over and kiss him, capturing his lips with her own. His hands find their way into her hair, hers cupping his face, and it doesn’t matter that they’re stuck at the top of a wheel. She doesn’t think she’ll ever be over the cascade of butterflies in her stomach when they kiss. Doesn’t think this will ever get old. 

At that moment, the Ferris wheel starts to move again, and they’re slowly deposited safely on the ground. 

 

They decide to go for tacos after they get off of the Ferris wheel, Nora’s legs shaking a little, as Ray knows a good place nearby, muttering something about  _ excellent macros  _ as they exit the fair. There’s a flower stall right on the street on their way, and flowers were a recurring theme in the rom-coms they watched. Flowers are what Ray gave her to brighten up the room while she had the flu, and she wants to make him as happy as he made her with the colourful bouquet. 

Flowers were also the thing her father bought for her mother every other week when she was little. Piles of red roses, bouquets of tulips straight from Holland, bunches of primroses in the spring. Her father wasn’t a good man, she knows that. She also knows that people are not black and white. Her father could be horribly cruel, and five minutes later extremely sweet. People who have loved their whole lives well and tried their best to be good can have weak moments too. The world exists in shades of grey. But flowers are  _ always  _ a good idea, Nora’s sure. A pop of colour amongst a sea of monochrome. She buys the biggest bunch at the stall for Ray. 

 

The date seems to be getting back on track until they’re right outside the taco place, mid-way through a conversation about whether or not Nora should watch the Star Wars prequels, when Ray starts to sneeze uncontrollably. 

“Ray? Are you ok? Did something happen? What do you need?” Nora’s not sure what to do in this situation, whether there's some kind of protocol, whether it’s an allergic reaction or the flu, passed from her to him, despite the flu shot he insisted was up to date. 

“I-” his words are lost in sneezes. 

It’s the flowers, Nora realises, ripping them from his grasp. She stares at them for a second, wondering if Ray is always allergic to a type of flowers in this bouquet or whether there’s something weird about these ones, or whether, in actual fact, the universe is conspiring against them. It would be all too easy to assume the latter, assume that everything is pulling them apart and telling them that they shouldn’t be together. Instead, Nora bursts into laughter at the obscenity of it all. At the fact that she’s standing on a street corner brandishing a bouquet whilst her boyfriend is trying to recover from a sneezing attack. The fact that she ate too much cotton candy and then they got stuck at the top of a Ferris wheel. The fact that, apparently, she has a fear of heights now. The fact that she didn’t even realise making reservations at a restaurant was a  _ thing.  _ Despite it all, she’s happy. Just like baby Ray on the road trip with his mom and brother, Nora feels like the world is good, right now. She hands the bouquet to an older couple, who thank her profusely, helps Ray to recover from the sneezes, and then they buy their tacos and find a large park bench on the way back to the Waverider. 

 

As they’re sitting down, to add insult to injury, it starts to rain. Fat droplets falling from the sky. Ray gave Nora meteorites and she’s giving him  _ rain.  _

“Oh!” Ray looks up as it starts, surprises at the sudden change in weather. “That’s unexpected.”

“What about this night  _ isn’t  _ unexpected,” Nora points out, leaning back on the bench. 

“Did you want to head back?” Ray gestures in the general direction of the Waverider. 

“No. It… it’s kind of nice,” Nora holds out a hand, fills it with water. When she was little, she pictured rain as the world’s reset button. Washing away anything bad. A new start blooming as the raindrops dried. 

“It  _ is _ nice,” Ray agrees. He stretches an arm around her again, tugging her to his side. She fits there just right, her head on his shoulder. 

“I’m sorry I failed at date planning,” she tells him. 

“You didn’t fail at anything. I had a great time,” Ray says, resting his chin atop her head. The rain tangles in their hair, streaks their skin. It brings an odd sort of peace. “Plus, it’s your first time planning a date! I think we can make some allowances.”

“But you’re so  _ good  _ at dates. You… you showed me the stars falling out of the sky. It was  _ beautiful.  _ I just got scared on a Ferris wheel.”

“Nora,” he says her name slowly, savours it. “I got to spend some time with you,  _ just  _ you, away from our usual daily mayhem. That’s enough for me. I don’t care if we’re sitting in an empty room with no windows, or watching the Leonids or, or stranded at the top of a Ferris wheel.  _ You  _ are more than enough.”

Nora swallows the lump in her throat. She’s  _ not  _ going to cry. If Ray notices anything in her voice, she’ll blame it ok the flu. 

“Thank you,” she says instead. “For always believing in me. Even when no one else did.”

“I’ll always believe in you,” Ray insists without hesitation. “In every life, on every world. You’ll always be the best person I know.”

Nora kisses him again then, slow and soft, telling him without words how much he means to her. How she doesn’t ever want to without him. How anywhere with him is her favourite place. How a date with him is a thousand times better than cliche rom-com dates from the movies they watched when she was sick. 

 

Ray entrusts Zari with Nora’s next phase of cultural catch up, both a little sick of romantic comedies. Zari gets her into classic horror, but not before making Nora promise that she won’t try and plan any future dates inspired by them. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Come say hi on tumblr @jakelovesamy. Comments make my entire week so feel free to leave one!


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